Capitol Threat by William Bernhardt Read Free Book Online Page B

to smile or toss them a quote, as if he were a trained seal performing for their damned minicams. Yesterday he was an unknown; today, they all wanted a piece of him.
    The grass was ruined, positively ruined. And the petunias were destroyed.
    Ray’s petunias.
    Roush sat in his library, one hand pressed against his forehead, the other clutching a Scotch-and-soda that he had not even sipped. Never in forty-seven years had he experienced a day like this one. Up before dawn for a meeting with the President, who behind the closed doors of the White House asked all the questions he was not supposed to ask. Abortion. Gun control. Even gay rights. And Roush hadn’t lied, either. He didn’t for a minute believe the framers of the Constitution intended to provide any rights to homosexuals, penumbral or otherwise. Such a thing would have been unheard of at that time. Any rights of that nature had to come from the legislature, not from the Constitution—and certainly not from the Supreme Court. And so President Blake, confident that the forty-seven-year-old bachelor posed no overt risks, had led him to the Rose Garden and publicly bestowed ringing praise about his judicial acumen, even though Roush was quite certain the President had never read any of his opinions and never would.
    Then Roush sandbagged him. He dropped his little surprise in full view of the nation, the tiny revelation that changed everything.
    Even as he had approached the podium, he wasn’t sure he would be able to do it. He’d known he should; it was a matter of conscience. As he’d said, he would not live a lie, not once he became a public figure. Furthermore, by coming out as he did, he could make a stand for tolerance in the political arena that could benefit thousands, perhaps even millions, of Americans.
    But only at a cost. Yes, he’d known he should do it. Yet in the final seconds leading to the utterance of the speech, he was not certain that he would. Did he have the courage, not only to look the unblinking camera in the eye and tell it who he really is, but also to face the subsequent consequences? The painful price of honesty?
    The questioning following his announcement had been extremely awkward and was soon curtailed by the POTUS staff, who treated him as if he had sold nuclear secrets to a hostile nation. The President himself disappeared, probably never to be seen by Thaddeus Roush again. Blake’s chief of staff harangued him for the better part of an hour, saying Roush had abused their trust to forward his personal agenda. And perhaps she was right. Who could say? Roush never felt as if he were advancing an agenda; he was a judge, not an advocate. But he did have a core instinct for the difference between right and wrong. Hiding would have been wrong.
    Although he had used the phrase in his speech, he never saw what he had done as “coming out of the closet.” He’d never considered himself in the closet. His sexual preference wasn’t a secret; it was simply something he never talked about. Heterosexual judges never talked about their sex lives; why should he? He knew many of his friends suspected the truth; for that matter, he knew that the President’s investigators who had been burrowing into his life for the past two weeks suspected it. So long as it wasn’t out in the open, it wasn’t an issue, not even for the farthest of the far right. But he had brought it into the open. He had changed everything.
    When the White House had finally released him and he came home, Ray was waiting for him. They stared at each other for the longest, most excruciating time. But neither spoke.
    Should he have told Ray what he planned to do? Of course he should have. It seemed so obvious now. By outing himself, he had outed his lover as well. Ray should have had some say in that. Chalk it up to Roush’s muddled state of mind. He was running on instinct, blind instinct, more impulsive than compulsive, more feeling than planning. Ray had always been